From Sentence to Screen

Remember close reading? All those long-ago sections in hushed classrooms, clouded with students shuffling their feet awkwardly over texts, making astute-sounding stammers and abstruse-sounding circumlocutions? Now, the inventive quarterly Electric Literature is presenting another kind of close reading: (http://www.youtube.com/user/ElectricLiterature) like Marisa Silver, Aimee Bender, and Michael Cunningham. (Fans of the book club may want to check out the captivatingly sweet animation of a Lydia Davis sentence chosen, like all the picks, by the author.) The videos produce a kind of "Being John Malkovich" moment, like watching someone else read from inside their own head. It’s a visually lush experience that makes the undergraduate exegesis, no matter how stimulating, seem pedestrian in comparison.